London (18 January 2011) – Square Enix Ltd., the publisher of SQUARE ENIX® interactive entertainment products in Europe and other PAL territories, today announces a new release for next winter, FINAL FANTASY® XIII-2 for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. A sequel to “FINAL FANTASY XIII” originally released in Europe in March 2010 that has since shipped a cumulative total of 6 million units worldwide.

“Xbox isn’t a gaming console. Xbox is a family entertainment center. It’s a place to socialize. It’s a place to watch TV. We have Hulu coming. It’s the only system where you are the controller. Your voice, your gestures, your body. I think about my own family. My wife used to say, ‘No, no, that’s the machine the boys use,’ and now she says, ‘Yeah, I want to go watch movies. Let’s go play the dance game. It opens up accessibility to family entertainment because with the Kinect, you control these systems with your body, with your voice. We’ve opened up the world of content in TV, movies. You just sit there and say ‘Xbox’ or ‘play movie.’ You go to your average 15-year-old boy, and he will say, ‘I’ll take an Xbox.’ I want that average 15-year-old girl as excited about the Kinect, and we haven’t done as good a job drawing in that broader set of demographics.” – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft

Microsoft has always wanted to push the Xbox to be the entertainment feature in the living room, but I really don’t see how Kinect improves what the 360 already does towards that end in any meaningful way.